Blown and Torn
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: #ProjectShadowStory(Ari Moriarty). Don't throw it away. You can still use it, even if it's broken.


**Author's Note: **Oh, may I please play too? This looks like a really intriguing challenge!

Let's see, well…here we go. I'm not sure quite how unfortunate this will be…it might really be quite terrible to read, but I'm going to try.

Oh, and the piece was inspired by a piece that played in one of the shows I've performed at.

**Blown and Torn**

_My sails are blown and torn _

_And laid down wet_

_They need all the mending that they can get_

_No time to be attending the winds of life today_

_My sails are worn and weathered, and I'm bound to go my way_

Blown and Torn, Renaissance ballad, recorded by Rambling Sailors

Ari wasn't willing to admit it out loud, but the twisted colors of the TV world gave her brutal migraines.

She was an insignificant figure against the backdrop of the horrible interpretation of reality that the TV world seemed to be. Short, average, with too many curves and not enough leg, she had curly dark hair and very Ashkenazi features that came from her mother's bloodlines and an unfortunate run in with the trunk of a West Virginia sugar maple that had scarred pieces of her skull behind the ear. She was average beyond the meager definition of the word, the perfect picture of the everywoman, the layperson, an individual who would sink and melt into any local crowd or conglomeration. That was part of her charm. She was the backup, the last resort, the woman they called in when there was no one else available to fill a role at the last minute. She could become another woman or another man, was halfway there, already, to being the person she was destined to play. Part of a successful performance or portrayal involved losing a piece of herself in the role, and replacing it with the piece she'd stolen from the person she was trying to become. Ari was a patchwork, piecemeal picture, now, of all of the people she was, had discarded, and had decided to become. A haircut for one role, a shirt she'd purchased for the performance of another. None of it was really her, while all of it came from things she'd chosen to adopt and embody in the hopes of getting closer to theatrical perfection.

"You know," said a figure standing just a few feet in front of her, "you could probably stand to lose a little bit of weight. That's the best thing you could do for your acting career, and everybody knows it."

Ari looked up into the eyes of the mirror image of herself, with the same face, features, and way of holding her arms. The only difference, as far as Ari could see, was the eyes. This woman's eyes were gold and cold, full of feelings that Ari didn't look to stare too deeply into.

"There's no time," said Ari apologetically. "I've run out of hours in the day…I'd go to the gym more often, if I could, but…"

"But what?" said the image of herself. "But you're too busy doing everything else that you can possibly cram into your schedule?"

"Pretty much," agreed Ari with a shrug. "Sorry."

"So, make some time," insisted the other Ari. "Come on, it's for your benefit, right? It's not like you'll really hurt anybody by just dropping one thing off of your to-do list."

Ari shook her head. "I told you already," she said. "I can't do that. It's not up to me, there are people counting on me."

"There are people counting on me!" echoed the other Ari, in a mocking higher pitched re-interpretation of Ari's voice. "Like who? No, seriously, who? Who the hell do you think you're kidding, anyway? Nobody's counting on you. Nobody's paying attention to you. Most of the time everybody else has to stick around after you've finished with whatever task you're trying to complete, and they have to clean up your messes and fix your mistakes. Why don't you get that?"

"Practice," murmured Ari, "makes perfect. I will get better. I will become more self-reliant. That doesn't happen overnight, not for anyone. It takes work, and it takes time."

"And it never will, for you. See, that's the problem, that's what you don't understand, that's what makes you so frustrating. You don't get it. You're never going to 'get better.' It's not under your control, there's nothing you can do. You're sick. Sick people don't always get better. Sometimes, they just-!"

"You're wrong," insisted Ari quietly.

The other Ari snorted. "How can I be wrong?" she asked. "I'm you. I know everything about you."

Ari raised an eyebrow at her. "Apparently not," she retorted.

For some reason, that seemed to amuse the other Ari. "Oh, really?" she asked. "Then tell me something I don't know, huh? Tell me what the endgame is, here. Tell me what you're trying to achieve. Because frankly, I don't think you've got a real goal, I don't' think there's a plan. You just take on one responsibility after another, hoping that you'll end up being good for at least one thing, that maybe you'll e able to show them, through figuring out just one thing that no, they were wrong, they were all wrong about you. You proved them wrong when they said you couldn't graduate from highs school, right? And you proved them wrong when they said you'd never be able to make it all the way through college. You proved them wrong when they said you'd never be employable and you'd never find a job. You proved them wrong again, and again, and again, and yet it's not good enough, is it? It's not good enough for you, because what you really want is something you'll never be able to have, something that doesn't exist. You want to prove to them that you aren't broken, that you can fix it, that you're gonna be fine. Maybe the next thing you force yourself through will show the whole world just how fine you really are!"

The other Ari leaned in suddenly, right up close to Ari's face, forcing her to try and look directly in the other Ari's eyes.

"You can't even look straight at me," muttered the other Ari, with a combination of triumphant glee and disappointment that jarred and made no sense in Ari's head. "Face it, won't you, and give us both a break. You're not fine. You're not gonna be okay. You're just like those broken toys that your students keep bringing up for you to fix. You tell them it's broken, you can't fix it, there's nothing you can do, and they ask if they can throw it away in the trash. You tell them no, don't throw it away, it's still good. They can still play with it, even though you can't fix it. You're afraid to get rid of it because you hate the idea that anything is really, truly finished and too broken to keep."

Ari closed her eyes. It hurt, trying to stare right into that gaze, trying to keep eye contact with that other woman that was saying the same things she'd heard so many people tell her over the years. She didn't have to listen to them, she reminded herself. Doctors were not always right. She'd learned that one pretty young. Mommies and daddies, too, could make glaring, brutal mistakes. That one had been harder to fathom, but it had come with all the rest, and she'd learned to stomach it.

"No?" asked the other Ari. "Are you sure? Well, I guess everyone learns differently. Maybe you're more of a visual learner. Maybe what I have to do to convince you is show you."

While Ari watched, the other Ari suddenly started to grow. It was, for a moment, exactly the sort of thing that Ari had always wanted to happen to herself, to stretch and get taller, maybe to gain a few inches up and lose a few inches across as though she'd been pulled apart by one of those medieval torture devices. Then the face and form of her other self began to change as well, until it wasn't another Ari who was standing in front of her, but a strange and twisted image of all of the things that Ari could have been and might have been inside. The figure before her was huge, now, and wearing a magnificent reproduction of a red-brocade Renaissance lady's gown. It was the same sort of gown that Ari herself had worn in a recent production of something or other, but this gown was torn and tattered at the hem and around the sleeves, almost like a wind-tossed sail after a terrible storm. The face of her other self was now bashed in on one side, and there were horrible, black and purple bruises all around the crown of the other Ari's skull, right at the place where the brain must have been. The head was horribly deformed, and both of the eyes were hooded over, as though the other Ari was lost somewhere in between waking and nightmare-tossed sleep.

"You see this?" asked the other Ari, in a lower, more gravelly voice, lisped as though speech was slurred and hard for the other Ari to force out. "This is what we really are."

Ari looked up into the face of that monstrous creature, and closed her eyes.

"I won't accept that," she said, still forcing the calm, although her heart was beater faster and she could feel the tears threatening to force themselves out underneath her lids. "If I let myself believe that, I'll lose track of the next step. I'll be worthless…and then there won't be anything left. I can't give up. I know that I can still-!"

"You're a fool," muttered the other Ari, looming in suddenly closer.

"I'd rather be a fool," whispered Ari, "than nothing at all."


End file.
